This is the new colonialism. Western corporations are forcing their junk food down the collective throats of the developing world.

The story is as much abouteconomicsas it is nutrition. As multinational companies push deeper into the developing world, they are transforming local agriculture, spurring farmers to abandon subsistence crops in favor of cash commodities like sugar cane, corn and soybeans — the building blocks for many industrial food products. It is this economic ecosystem that pulls in mom-and-pop stores, big box retailers, food manufacturers and distributors, and small vendors

The new reality is captured by a single, stark fact: Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.

Mark Bittman gets right to the point of what’s wrong with our food system in this column.

Things are so bad that it seems change is impossible, but that doesn’t mean we should stop pushing for it.

changing the food system is a big battle, a war even, and winning it will take campaign finance reform and a more representative House and perhaps even the abolition of the Senate as well as a whole lot of restructuring and re-regulating.

Another article that shows we really don’t know what we don’t know about food and health.

The solution presented: more rigorous studies. I couldn’t agree more.

We can’t let food industry profiteers set the agenda for food, nutrition, and health. We have to get the crap ingredients and bad carbs out of our food and we have to get back to eating more natural foods.

“What we need,” Freudenberg said to me, “is to return to the public sector the right to set health policy and to limit corporations’ freedom to profit at the expense of public health.”

Bittman contributes to the ongoing discussion here at NobodyisFlyingthePlane about how certain industries deflect public discourse from what is best for our citizens to what makes the most profit, no matter the consequences.

The author he quotes poses a series of questions which get at the heart of the matter.

“Shouldn’t science and technology be used to improve human well-being, not to advance business goals that harm health?”

Similarly, we need to be asking not “Do junk food companies have the right to market to children?” but “Do children have the right to a healthy diet?”

Essentially its a PR game. Do we let whole industries spin how the conversation is framed or do we let the notion of the greater good underpin the conversations we have about our own well being?

Redefining the argument may help us find strategies that can actually bring about change. The turning point in the tobacco wars was when the question changed from the industry’s — “Do people have the right to smoke?” — to that of public health: “Do people have the right to breathe clean air?” Note that both questions are legitimate, but if you address the first (to which the answer is of course “yes”) without asking the second (to which the answer is of course also “yes”) you miss an opportunity to convert the answer from one that leads to greater industry profits to one that has literally cut smoking rates in half.

it’s become increasingly clear that food companies engineer hyperprocessed foods in ways precisely geared to most appeal to our tastes. This technologically advanced engineering is done, of course, with the goal of maximizing profits, regardless of the effects of the resulting foods on consumer health, natural resources, the environment or anything else.

Freudenberg details how six industries — food and beverage, tobacco, alcohol, firearms, pharmaceutical and automotive — use pretty much the same playbook to defend the sales of health-threatening products. This playbook, largely developed by the tobacco industry, disregards human health and poses greater threats to our existence than any communicable disease you can name.

All of these industries work hard to defend our “right” — to smoke, feed our children junk, carry handguns and so on — as matters of choice, freedom and responsibility. Their unified line is that anything that restricts those “rights” is un-American.

says Freudenberg: “The right to be healthy trumps the right of corporations to promote choices that lead to premature death and preventable illnesses. Protecting public health is a fundamental government responsibility; a decent society should not allow food companies to convince children to buy food that’s bad for them or to encourage a lifetime of unhealthy eating.”

Like this:

The dairy industry is not your friend. They may have tricked the government into recommending you consume a pound and half a day of their product (by weight – 3 cups by volume) because they say you need it to survive, but there are lots of knowledgeable people and organizations who would have you believe otherwise. Not everyone has the resources to manipulate the political system like those in agribusiness, so alternative takes are not often heard.

Why does the government recommend we drink so much milk? In the immortal words of Krusty the Clown, “They drove a dump truck full of money up to my house! I’m not made of stone!”

That’s how we’ll refer to it when lobbyists and special interests legally bribe the government to subvert the greater good. The case with the American Dairy Association is more about telling us what is in fact the greater good than actually subverting a long standing belief.

The writer of this opinion piece decided to take matters into his own hands and see what happens when he cuts out dairy all together. Its several months later and I’m pretty sure he’s still alive and doing quite well.